BREAKING NEWS North Korea Predicts “Catastrophe” As Massive U.S. War Games Begin Monday – RECORDS: 10,000 North Koreans Admitted to USA; Fears Many are Military “Sleeper Cells” Preparing to ATTACK

Alas, “nuclear war” risk is about to come back with a vengeance because on Monday US and South Korea are scheduled to begin joint military exercises, a massive show of force which every time in the past has infuriated North Korea, sometimes triggering a show of force.

Held every fall in South Korea, the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian war games are the world’s largest computerized command and control exercise. Some 30,000 U.S. soldiers and more than 50,000 South Korean troops usually take part, along with hundreds of thousands of first responders and civilians, some practicing for a potential chemical weapons attack.

Scheduled long before the recent diplomatic fallout between Washington and Pyongyang, the U.S. and South Korean militaries will simulate warfare with North Korea from Aug. 21 to 31, well aware that North Korea could respond with another missile test, according to McClatchy.

In light of this perceived provocation by North Korea, which will almost certainly prompt some reaction, Scott A. Snyder, a Korea specialist with the Council on Foreign Relations said “Over the course of the next two weeks I expect tensions to escalate. This is always a sensitive issue, but it is more hair-trigger as the North Koreans are very sensitive to the likely additional nuclear-capable aircraft flyovers.”

While the Pentagon has repeatedly stated that the biannual exercises are “defensive” in nature, both North Korea and China have long criticized them as a provocation and an affront to regional security. “There certainly will be some reaction,” said J.D. Williams, a retired Marine colonel and defense policy researcher at the RAND Corporation in California. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if North Korea conducted some kind of missile launch — not a test but a defiant demonstration of might.

As discussed earlier in the week, North Korea’s Kim backed off a threat to launch missiles at Guam, saying he’d watch “the foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees” before deciding on the launch, a decision that Trump quickly tweeted was “very wise and well reasoned.” While the exchange suggested that cooler heads were prevailing in the latest U.S. standoff with North Korea. But next week’s war games could rekindle hostilities. On Thursday, North Korean state media declared that the military exercises will “further drive the situation on the Korean Peninsula into a catastrophe.”

The exercise, along with one in March, often triggers anti-war protests in South Korea and condemnation from China. While Chinese President Xi Jinping has been noticeably cool toward Kim Jong Un, and has been critical of North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, China has long wanted the United States to shrink its military footprint in Asia, including some 12 bases in South Korea and Japan.

In an editorial Monday, China’s Global Times newspaper, an arm of the Communist Party’s People’s Daily, lambasted the decision by the United States and South Korea to go ahead with Monday’s exercises.

“The drill will definitely provoke Pyongyang more, and Pyongyang is expected to make a more radical response,” the newspaper said. “If South Korea really wants no war on the Korean Peninsula, it should try to stop this military exercise.”

In other words, China – which is largely expected to rein in North Korea – is already hedging in case North Korea does something impulsive, suggesting the exercise itself could be the provocation that sets Kim off. And set him off, it will: in the past North Korea has reacted strongly during the biannual war games. In 2014, the north fired off scud missiles during the March exercises held by the U.S.-South Korean command, called Foul Eagle.

During the 2015 Ulchi-Freedom Guardian exercises, North Korea and South Korea exchanged artillery and rocket fire over their border. That exchange came after two South Korean soldiers were maimed stepping on land mines in the Demilitarized Zone. South Korea accused North Korean soldiers of sneaking across the border and planting the land mines.

Last week, China and Russia urged the United States to consider a “freeze for freeze” agreement to reduce tensions. In such a deal, Pyongyang would agree to suspend its tests of missiles and nuclear weapons, and Washington and Seoul would agree to suspend large-scale military exercises. That, however, is not happening: U.S. military experts say such a deal would give a lopsided advantage to North Korea, which could continue its military training even as the U.S.-South Korea exercises were suspended. “It is hard to imagine why the United States would accept that, because of the vulnerability it would create,” said Bruce Bennett, a senior defense researcher at RAND.

In a media briefing on Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States will continue to hold joint exercises with South Korea. And since North Korea will immediate see this “provocation” as a green light for a response.

RECORDS: 10,000 North Koreans Admitted to USA; Fears Many are Military “Sleeper Cells” Preparing to ATTACK

The U.S. has issued more than 10,000 visas to North Koreans in the past 20 years, 18 of them this year from March to June, an analysis of visa records shows.And many of those people may be military “sleeper cells” sent to the US to prepare INTERNAL ATTACKS UPON AMERICA if the two nations go to war.

There is no record of the whereabouts or activities in the United States of those who visit on business or tourism — a group accounting for as many as half the North Korean visitors last year. The State Department does not keep track visa applicants’ specific purposes for entering the U.S. — a piece of information typically gathered through visa applications and interviews, a State Department official told VOA.

“There’s no systematic way that that’s done,” the official said. “And it would be impossible to do because visas often are multiple-entry.”

The official said all visa applicants are subject to “very strict security screening standards,” and the U.S. issues visas to anyone who fulfills application requirementsand is not determined to be a security threat. As the U.S. does not have official diplomatic relations with North Korea, the official said, all visa applications for North Koreans are issued outside the country.

So far this year, 18 North Koreans received visas from March to June, seven of them were business or tourist visas.

The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs only began publishing monthly visa statistics in April.

FILE – The United Nations logo is pictured in front of the United Nations Headquarters building during the 71st United Nations General Assembly in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S.

​Business or tourist visas

Last year, the U.S. issued 100 visas to North Koreans, 52 of which were business or tourist visas under the B-1/B-2 category, Voice of America found. The rest were diplomats.

These figures were derived by looking at yearly nonimmigrant visa statistics published by the Bureau of Consular Affairs from 1997 to 2016, as well as the monthly figures from this year. Immigrant visa weren’t included because the bureau was not able to produce immigrant visa records based on nationality. North Koreans who have renounced their citizenship — such as defectors — also weren’t included in the analysis.

From 1997 to 2001, the second half of Bill Clinton’s presidency, more than 1,200 North Koreans obtained business or tourist visas each year, with several dozen more getting student or diplomatic visas. Nine received work visas.

Other than diplomatic visas for officials stationed at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, North Koreans have also been in the U.S. under an array of visas. Between 1997 and 2016, North Koreans received 281 F-1 student visas and 15 H-1B visas.

Other North Korean visa recipients include athletes, artists, trainees, sailors on foreign-flagged ships, employees of international companies, transit visitors and a fiancé or fiancée of a U.S. citizen. (A list of U.S. visa categories can be accessed here.)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visits a Mushroom Farm in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang July 16, 2013.

​Upper echelons

North Korean citizens traveling or residing overseas are likely to be members of Pyongyang’s upper echelons, Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, says. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, for instance, studied in Switzerland while his grandfather and father before him led the one-party state.

“They keep a low profile; they blend in,” Scarlatoiu said. “Probably in the case of students, their peers will not know that they’re from North Korea.”

Kim Byung-ki, a political science and international relations professor at Korea University in Seoul, explained that when abroad, North Koreans are tasked to gather information.

“The trip to the United States serves a very important purpose of understanding the society, how American people think about North Korea, learn more about their behavior, their taste, their political views, their social views,” Kim said. “I believe it is an important intelligence-gathering operation as it was the case in the Soviet Union times.”​

US-North Korea tensions increase

Tensions between the United States and North Korea have ratcheted up since President Donald Trump took office. North Korea has fired 18 missiles this year, and the State Department has barred most Americans from traveling to North Korea after the death of Otto Warmbier. An American university student who was detained for 18 months, Warmbier was returned to the U.S. in a coma and died on June 19, 2017.

But, U.S. and North Korea relations have not always been as tense as they are today. And even now, contacts are occurring regularly between Joseph Yun, the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song Il, a senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s U.N. mission, according to U.S. officials and others briefed on the process, according to the Associated Press. The officials weren’t authorized to discuss the confidential exchanges and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The Clinton administration, from 1993 to 2001, marked a relatively amicable period for U.S.-North Korea relations, as rapprochement efforts between the two governments were at their high point, Robert Gallucci, the chief U.S. negotiator during the North Korean nuclear crisis in the 1990s, said.

Gallucci led the brokering of the 1994 Agreed Framework, an agreement with North Korea that aimed to freeze its nuclear weapons program.

“I tend to think of the period as one in which relations improved mostly because we had thought we were successfully addressing the threat from the North Koreans’ developing nuclear weapons program in the 90s,” Gallucci said.

During Clinton’s presidency, North Korea endured a severe famine and was riddled with the imposing of sanctions on Pyongyang as the regime strived to circumvent the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which North Korea acceded in 1985 and left in 2003.

The relationship went downhill from the George W. Bush administration, which dubbed Pyongyang as an “axis of evil,” as it held a different view about the value of engagement with North Koreans, Gallucci said.

The Bush administration, along with China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas, participated in the Six-Party Talks, a convention that aims to dismantle Pyongyang’s nuclear operations. The six countries last convened for the sixth round in 2008, when North Korea chose to reverse its dismantlement efforts.

Attempts to bring Pyongyang back to the table have been stymied since.

SLEEPER CELLS TO ATTACK US INTERNALLY

North Korea state-run media actually broadcast the warning that “America is on the knife’s edge of death” and unless we surrender and accept them as a nuclear state, they will send us “presents” (nuclear bombs) and “keep sending them.” Yes, they actually said this HERE and HERE

Moreover, it is well known that North Korea has already sent sleeper cells, who arrived in the US bearing either China Passports, or forged South Korean Passports. They’re living among us, in peace for now. But their orders are to attack our infrastructure – electric grids, water supplies, railroads, highway bridges and Tunnels.

If commerce gets disrupted by such acts of sabotage, it may not be possible for trucks to get through to re-stock food supplies.

But there’s a darker problem: These North Korea sleeper cells likely have WEAPONIZED SMALLPOX virus, to release here in America. If they perpetrate such a biological weapons attack, entire towns may have to go under QUARANTINE for a month or more to halt the spread of this deadly disease, since we stopped vaccinating Americans in the 1970’s. Once QUARANTINE is issued, stores will be closed; there won’t be any way to go out to buy food! Can you survive for a month or more with no food from stores?

WORSE, YOU CANNOT GET VACCINATED FOR SMALLPOX ANYMORE, EVEN IF YOU OFFER TO PAY FOR IT YOURSELF, BECAUSE A VACCINATED PERSON “SOUGHS OFF ACTIVE VIRUS” WHICH COULD SPREAD TO PEOPLE WITH COMPROMISED IMMUNE SYSTEMS. SO GOV’T REFUSES TO VACCINATE ANYONE BUT THEIR OWN WORKERS! ! !

Those of us born prior to the 1970’s have our vaccination, but all our kids do not. Therefore, if the North Koreans actually unleash such an attack upon us, no family in their right mind is going to allow their un-vaccinated kids out. You’d better have food stored-up for this type of problem.

Below are references for Emergency Supplies. Don’t wait. Get yours now, BEFORE the SHTF.

Wild lettuce is a plant. The leaves, sap (latex), and seed are used to make medicine.
Wild lettuce has been used since the 19th century for pain relief, to help induce sleep and as a tonic for the nervous system. It was traditionally used by native North Americans for lucid dreaming purposes.